


parallax

by sweetestsight



Series: parallax [2]
Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Sci-Fi, solar punk au, space travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 12:52:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18621016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetestsight/pseuds/sweetestsight
Summary: All things are relative in space. It's something he's always known. He'd have to, being on a ship like this, it's just that he's only now really understanding it. Distance is relative, but these days he can only differentiate between two measures: here, and just out of reach.





	parallax

**Author's Note:**

> Lol I was supposed to be studying for my astronomy final. Instead I wrote this thing.

All things are relative in space. It's something he's always known. He'd have to, being on a ship like this, it's just that he's only now really understanding it. Distance is relative, but these days he can only differentiate between two measures: here, and just out of reach. 

Relativity requires a starting point, though.

To start…

Where can he start?

The ship is creaky these days, creaky without the constant love and care of the people within it or maybe just louder now with the silence of its occupants. Everything out here is relative.

To start, the relativity of their course: away, or maybe toward. To start, the relativity of he himself. He is tiny among the stars. He is massive among the stars. He feels like he’s going to explode, feels the heaviness of it all weighing down on him. He has an iron heart, not strong but molten, not fiery but incapable of fusion. He is a giant, bigger and brighter and more fiery than anything, and he has an iron core. He has mere days before total shutdown before he explodes in a supernova the likes of which the universe has never seen.

To start, he could devour everything.

But the stars pass in the window, pass quick enough that he can track their progress, and that’s something. Speaking of relativity, that’s something: the relative progress of humanity, the speed with which it all transpires. How long ago was it that they couldn’t even dream of such a feat? And now here they are.

The ship groans.

He turns and starts to the upper deck, passes quiet rooms and dark corridors until he reaches his destination: the hatch to the bridge is open and the overhead lights are off, the controls and the stars outside the window illuminating everything in cool shades of blue and purple. He can barely make out a blond head hunched over the main control deck.

“Roger,” he calls, hushed, too afraid to speak over the ship’s own words. She creaks and groans and he’d be loathe to interrupt her.

Roger starts though, turns to look backward. “You should be resting, Brimi.”

“I can’t sleep.”

Roger holds a hand toward him then, fingertips extended, and his face is impossible to make out so Brian steps forward. He comes closer and closer until he can see the lights of passing galaxies play across his skin, until he can see the flecks in his eyes, closer until Roger ducks his head to hide his face against his stomach, arms coming around him loosely.

“I keep thinking,” he continues in a murmur. He lets his hands play through blond hair. “I keep thinking about the last time.”

“You can’t get stuck on that.”

“I know, but maybe if there had been some way—”

“Stop that,” Roger says, and this time his voice is sharp. When Brian flinches a bit he turns to kiss the inside of his wrist in apology. “You can’t get stuck on what could’ve happened, okay? You’ll just exhaust yourself thinking about it.”

And that hurts, really. “I don’t want to forget them,” he says, and he can feel his eyes watering.

“You won’t have the chance to. We’ll find them.”

“What if we don’t?”

“We will.”

“What if we _don’t?_ ”

“Brian,” Roger says, and this time it’s soft in a way that makes him flush. Roger’s looking up at him and he can’t look away: he’s always been ethereal but here he’s celestial, a part of the stars. _We are all star stuff,_ Brian knows, but here he believes it. “They’re out there somewhere, and they might be in trouble but they’re alive. We both know they’re alive. They’re too tough to let a few pirates and some shitty jungle planet get them, okay?”  

“You know it’s not just that,” Brian says.

“I know. I know that.”

“Do you even know how many people want—” he starts, but he can’t finish it. _How many people want them dead. How many people want to use them, want to use the four of them. How vulnerable all of them really are._

“I know. I know, love. Listen to me when I say you can’t get stuck thinking about that.”

He doesn’t feel the tears spill over. He wouldn’t even know they had if it weren’t for Roger reaching up to wipe them away. He looks down at the desk, at the piles of charts sitting there, at the chicken-scratch handwritten notes that only the truly sleep-deprived can produce. “What do you think about?” he murmurs.

Roger sighs. “I think forward. I think of what our next step is, where we need to go next. What we need to do,” he adds, running a hand soothingly over Brian’s waist.

Their next steps are all laid out. They know where they’re going. They know the next logical moves, know how to play it smart. They know how to fix this, or at least how to die trying.

“I think of the logical side of it,” Roger continues softly, and wipes at Brian’s face again, “and when I can’t do that, when everything feels absolutely pointless and I just want to fly into the nearest star and throw it all away, that’s when I think of you guys.”

His breath hitches on a sob and he pulls Roger closer. “What do you think about?” he whispers.

“Freddie’s voice,” Roger says. Brian hasn’t heard the name in a week—has tried to avoid even thinking it, and hearing it now is like a balm. “He was singing the first time I saw him, that folk song from the outer rim. Like some sort of siren. He’d always be singing that. Hell, he’s probably singing it right now. Do you remember?”

He can’t forget the sound of it, haunting and a little eerie in its melancholy— _blue orbit lose me in your tide, by your side I’m falling, all in you we see the light, sight of old we yearn for blue,_ ringing through the ship’s halls accentuated by Roger’s laughter and the clanking of tools and a pair of green eyes looking his way, crinkled in a smile—

“John gives the best hugs. He’s always so warm and he holds on so tight and just clings. He didn’t always. I think it took him a little while to get comfortable around us, but after that he turned me into a chronic cuddler. I couldn’t stop. Fuck it, Brian. I think about that and I know I’m not fucking dying without having one more hug from John, I’m just not.”

He remembers the first time John had touched him, fingertips grazing feather-light up his arm like he was testing it out. _Is this okay, how about this, how about this,_ his eyes had said, until they’d come to rest a little more firmly against his shoulder, their sides just barely touching, the smell of his shampoo tickling Brian’s nose, and finally he’d looked at him solemnly. _Thank you,_ murmured quietly, and Brian can’t remember what he’d been thanking him for but he remembers the way his mouth shaped the words.

He doesn’t allow himself to think like that. He allows himself to now.

“What else?” he whispers to Roger, and is almost afraid of his response.

“The woman at the bazaar. I remember that. I’ll never forget it.”

“I don’t believe in that stuff,” Brian sniffs.

“Maybe you should. She hasn’t been wrong yet.”

Her words still rattle in his head, her eyes a bit too knowing and colorful in a way that eyes shouldn’t be. _Galactic souls are born of the same stuff,_ she’d said. _You think it’s science, you there with the brown dwarf heart. It’s not. Things will always come back together, always. You think the same molecules never meet again but they always do. That’s what you don’t see. The four of you will find each other and you will never let each other go, not for as long as you live._

Freddie had smiled coyly, because he loved stuff like that, always did. _There are only three of us,_ he’d said, laughter hiding behind his voice.

_There will be four soon. You’ll know when._

And they did, or Freddie did—had seen something when he’d first seen John, had clung to him in a way that stirred a shard of jealousy in Brian’s heart until he’d looked closer and fallen in love with John too, a little later but twice as fast.

“What else?” he whispers.

“I think of our first time. I think of every one of our first times.”

His first kiss with Roger had been a joke, and they’d both pulled away giggling afterwards.

His first kiss with Freddie had been amicable, had been friendly. His first one that meant something had been with Roger’s face buried in his neck, their lips meeting over his shoulder and slowly exploring each other as the stars passed outside.

His first with John had been shaky and too hard and over too soon, punctuated with _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, god I didn’t mean to,_ eyes wide with panic until Brian had pulled him in and kissed him back, gentle but firm and sure.

He remembers the four of them stupidly in love in those days, stealing kisses on the bridge, learning each other in the starlight, marveling in the warmth of each other. He remembers gasping and moaning, remembers laughing, remembers thinking he shouldn’t be doing that and then laughing even harder because he wanted to, because he was so fucking _happy._

“What else?” he asks, and he only realizes he’s shaking when Roger soothes a hand up his arm.

“I think of our last time,” he murmurs.

He does too, and it haunts him because he hadn’t known. It had been hurried and a shade too rough, punctuated by giggles as they all maneuvered around each other, Freddie chanting _come on, come on, we’re gonna be late,_ Roger laughing against the back of his neck. It was wonderful, it’s always wonderful, but he should’ve appreciated it more. He should’ve forgotten the deadlines entirely, should’ve dragged it out forever, should’ve carved them into his fucking bones. He should have appreciated them the way they deserved to be appreciated.

“What else?” he mumbles.

Roger’s grip on him tightens and he looks up to catch Brian’s eyes. “I think of the last time I saw the two of them,” he says, all trace of warmth gone. “I think of them running, I think of them shouting. John was crying. I could see it from a hundred paces because of the way his eyes caught the light. I couldn’t even hear what he was screaming but I could see that. And then he went down.”

Brian feels another sob choke him and he tamps it down viciously; he needs to hear this, he knows he does, and he knows Roger needs him to hear it too by the way he rubs a thumb over his hip, his grip never letting up.

“I know I heard Freddie scream then. Even over the sound of the engines I could hear that. He has such a beautiful voice and the last time I heard it it was screaming in absolute agony, he was—” he cuts off, swallows, then continues more quietly but just as firm. “I think about how he turned, how he ran back, how he couldn’t let John be taken alone. I think about that and how we left them there and I don’t feel bad because that’s what they would have wanted. They loved us so fucking much, Bri. They wanted us to run. Do you know that?”

“I know,” he breathes. “I know they would’ve.”

Roger nods. “I think about that more than anything. I think about how—how selfless the two of them were toward love, you know? I think about that every day. And then I think about where they might be now, if they’re together, if they’re hurt. I think about what it would be like to hold the two of them again, to hear their voices again. I think about how badly I want that. Are you thinking about it?”

He is. He can’t stop. He nods.

“I think about that,” Roger says, so quietly Brian can barely hear it, “and then I get the fuck back to work.”

Brian blinks. He’s right. He blinks, blinks his tears away, takes a shaky breath and then another, deeper and more even.

God, he’s been wasting time.

“You really think we’ll find them?”

“I know we’ll find them because I’m not going to give up on them. I’ll spend the rest of my life if I have to. I’m not giving up. Go rest up, Bri. I’ve got this, okay?” He lets one arm hang around Brian’s waist but the other goes to his charts, flipping through them slowly.

He takes another breath, slow and deep, and shakes his head. “No.”

Roger looks up sharply.

“I’ve wasted enough fucking time. I’m done moping.”

“You haven’t been moping. Take as long as you need to process everything, okay? It’s—”

“No,” he says more firmly. “I’m done. Move over. It’s time to get our asses in gear.”

Roger watches him, wide-eyed, and it throws him vividly back to the first time they’d met. There’s something in his eyes that Brian can’t identify but he knows it intimately: the feeling of standing on a steep ravine, the feeling of starting the engines up for the first time, the feeling of taking off.

Roger’s face when he’d first laid his eyes on the ship, his face when he’d first laid his eyes on the controls. His face when he’d first laid his eyes on each of them in turn.

“We’re doing this,” Brian says, more to himself than anything, and turns to look out the window as galaxies pass by.

They’re not far away from their destination, now. Another lead, another dead end maybe, but another part in the journey. He gets that now. They’re doing this if it takes them to the edge of the verse and back.

Roger’s hand slips from his waist and finds his hand. He laces their fingers together and squeezes.

Brian squeezes back.

**Author's Note:**

> This could potentially turn into a new series or something asldkgjlkj I have a vague idea of a Plot 
> 
> I love you all. Let me know what you think please!!


End file.
